Recommendations for intro to python+programming lecture to Humanities MA students

[Göktuğ Kayaalp]

Chris Angelico <rosuav at gmail.com> wrote:
>On Thu, Nov 21, 2019 at 4:42 AM Nick Sarbicki <nick.a.sarbicki at gmail.com> wrote:
>> RE Conda and distros - I'd forget about them, in my experience you may as
>> well learn to use pip and install what you need that way, in the long term
>> it is faster and more flexible. Python generally supplies a perfectly good
>> installer for most operating systems at python.org - no need for anything
>> else. Keeping it to just standard python (+ some libs you don't explicitly
>> need to explain) makes it less complex.
>
>Agreed. In fact, given the tight context here, I would go even further
>and stick to JUST the standard library - there's already way more in
>there than you need for a single lecture. Maybe just name-drop pip and
>hint at the fact that there's a lot more to Python than just what you
>see here, but other than that, keep it really simple.

I’d be extatic if I could do that, but AFAIK there are no plotting
libraries in the stdlib.  ‘statistics’ is nice, but lacks stuff we need
often as linguists, like chi^2, t-tests, correlations, (m)anova, &c.

>> In summary I'd aim to inspire not to teach - so show some basics at the
>> beginning to show how accessible it can be, and then feel free to jump off
>> into advanced python land to showcase what is possible using whatever you
>> are most comfortable with. Essentially show them they can learn python, and
>> then inspire them to want to learn python.
>>
>
>Absolutely agreed. Your job is not to turn them into programmers. Your
>job is just to inspire them - to show them possibilities, to excite
>them, to empower them to play.

Thanks!

        -gk.

-- 
İ. Göktuğ Kayaalp	<https://www.gkayaalp.com/>
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